Parpon perched in a room at the top of the mill. He could see every
house in the village, and he knew people a long distance off. He was a
droll dwarf, and, in his way, had good times in the world. He turned the
misery of the world into a game, and grinned at it from his high little
eyrie with the dormer window. He had lived with Farette the miller for
some years, serving him with a kind of humble insolence.
It was not a joyful day for Farette when he married Julie. She led him a
pretty travel. He had started as her master; he ended by being her slave
and victim.
She was a wilful wife. She had made the Seigneur de la Riviere, of the
House with the Tall Porch, to quarrel with his son Armand, so that Armand
disappeared from Pontiac for years.
When that happened she had already stopped confessing to the good Cure;
so it may be guessed there were things she did not care to tell, and for
which she had no repentance. But Parpon knew, and Medallion the
auctioneer guessed; and the Little Chemist's wife hoped that it was not
so. When Julie looked at Parpon, as he perched on a chest of drawers,
with his head cocked and his eyes blinking, she knew that he read the
truth. But she did not know all that was in his head; so she said sharp
things to him, as she did to everybody, for she had a very poor opinion
of the world, and thought all as flippant as herself. She took nothing
seriously; she was too vain. Except that she was sorry Armand was gone,
she rather plumed herself on having separated the Seigneur and his son--
it was something to have been the pivot in a tragedy. There came others
to the village, as, for instance, a series of clerks to the Avocat; but
she would not decline from Armand upon them. She merely made them
miserable.
But she did not grow prettier as time went on. Even Annette, the sad
wife of the drunken Benoit, kept her fine looks; but then, Annette's life
was a thing for a book, and she had a beautiful child. You cannot keep
this from the face of a woman. Nor can you keep the other: when the
heart rusts the rust shows.
After a good many years, Armand de la Riviere came back in time to see
his father die. Then Julie picked out her smartest ribbons, capered at
the mirror, and dusted her face with oatmeal, because she thought that he
would ask her to meet him at the Bois Noir, as he had done long ago. The
days passed, and he did not come. When she saw Armand at the funeral--
a tall man with a dark beard and a grave face, not like the Armand she
had known, he seemed a great distance from her, though she could almost
have touched him once as he turned from the grave. She would have liked
to throw herself into his arms, and cry before them all: "Mon Armand!"
and go away with him to the House with the Tall Porch. She did not care
about Farette, the mumbling old man who hungered for money, having ceased
to hunger for anything else--even for Julie, who laughed and shut her
door in his face, and cowed him.
After the funeral Julie had a strange feeling. She had not much brains,
but she had some shrewdness, and she felt her romance askew. She stood
before the mirror, rubbing her face with oatmeal and frowning hard.
Presently a voice behind her said: "Madame Julie, shall I bring another
bag of meal?"
She turned quickly, and saw Parpon on a table in the corner, his legs
drawn up to his chin, his black eyes twinkling.
"Idiot!" she cried, and threw the meal at him. He had a very long,
quick arm. He caught the basin as it came, but the meal covered him. He
blew it from his beard, laughing softly, and twirled the basin on a
finger-point.
"Like that, there will need two bags!" he said.
"Imbecile!" she cried, standing angry in the centre of the room.
"Ho, ho, what a big word! See what it is to have the tongue of fashion!"